Recent advances in chiral aggregation-induced emission fluorogens

Abstract

Over the past decade, aggregation-induced emission (AIE) molecules have played a pivotal role in bioimaging, anti-microbial, and photodynamic therapy, and have been at the forefront of several disciplines worldwide. When combined with chiral moieties, they can easily collide with dazzling sparks and exhibit exceptional and unique advantages. In the application of chiral recognition and measurement of enantiomeric excess, it can identify chiral molecules visually based on color change and precipitation reaction, quantitatively analyze chiral molecules while determining the enantiomeric composition based on the fluorescence intensity change at different wavelengths, and obtain two parameters about chiral molecules from one measurement, thereby demonstrating its high selectivity, sensitivity and accuracy in chiral identification. In the field of organic circularly polarized luminescent (CPL) materials, the asymmetry (g_lum) of common organic light emitting elements is usually between 10⁻⁵ and 10⁻², whereas the CPL asymmetry factor (g_lum) of chiral AIE fluorogens (AIEgens) can reach 1.42, which is very close to the theoretical value of 2. Therefore, the combination of chiral elements and luminescent groups promotes their adoption in the field of organic CPL materials. Herein we have summarized the recent applications of chiral AIEgens in both chiral molecule recognition and circularly polarized organic light-emitting diode (CP-OLED) in order to provide future researchers with a more comprehensive and detailed understanding of chiral AIEgens and to encourage more scientists to contribute to the development of AIEgens.